Ever wanted to be in charge? Well, in my own little world I will be, one day. Just not quite yet. I'm a bit tired at the moment... maybe I'll take over after I've had my little nap.
The United Dingdom - stating the bleeding obvious so you don't have to.
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Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Despicable Me

Well, I learned a thing or two yesterday. Having got used
to seeing the abbreviation LGBT used liberally – or illiberally – by the media
and having got used to the idea that Gay Pride has become LGBT Pride I stumbled
upon LGBTQ. “Q?” I asked, “Queer” ‘they’ replied (personal pronouns get
trickier every day). Then, just as I was absorbing this new piece of
concatenation and wondering what the crucial difference between L, G and Q was,
I was introduced to LGBTQI, to which I wittily asked “QI means like Stephen
Fry?” The rolling of the tumbleweed could be heard across the world.

Twitter is marvellous. It lets you have conversations
that in real life could get you beaten up, barred, sacked or excommunicated. You
can stop any time you like and you don’t have to lose friends over it – not
real friends, anyway. But some just take it too far. Words on a screen are
worse than weapons to some and to misuse forms of address for those who don’t
conform to what is undeniably the binary norm is considered almost as bad as
physical abuse. One day we may all end up with our own individual identification
and wear tattooed bar codes on our foreheads so that people know how to greet
us and what subjects to steer away from, or be uncharacteristically sensitive
to.

But if you can choose something as fundamental as your gender/sexual
identity and then march and campaign for recognition, surely you can be big
enough to choose how you react towards those who don’t understand your
concerns. It’s not their battle to fight for your rights and some of them are
bewildered and yes, offended by your insistence that they accept you, no matter
how much it costs them. It might be in your interests if you are a militant
gender warrior to cut them some slack; after all, many of them are from the
generation who fought – actually fought and died - for the rights you so
casually demand.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. My reaction to
intolerance is indifference. You don’t like my plain vanilla identity, I don’t
care. That doesn’t mean I ‘hate’ you; far from it. And while I find the
screeching and appropriation amusing, your multi-coloured, bifurcated, binary-denying,
straight-hating, all-inclusive-unless-you’re-a-Tory, confused, identity-meandering
crusade is just a sideshow to the important things in life. It may be important
to you, but it really isn’t important to anybody else, other than some right-on
politicians looking for a sectarian vote bloc.

The important things in life? Well, that’s up to you. But
in my book that means navigating the stormy waters of this veil of tears with,
well, with as few actual tears as possible. Not starting fights you can’t
finish, not getting upset over things you can’t change and not craving things
you will never have. Try it, a quiet pragmatism goes a long way in the search
for contentment. I really don’t care whether you are L or G or B or T or Q or I or even 'plus'; it's not me you have to convince... it sounds like it's you. You’re welcome.